Would South Korea ever build the bomb? Probably not, but there is a constituency in the country that has thought about it. Aaron and Jeffrey discuss South Korea’s nuclear weapon history – and constraints on proliferation.
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My favorite anecdote about South Korean nuclear weapon program comes from Bruce Cuming’s Korea’s Place in the Sun: Before his assassination, President Park boast that he will parade the nuclear weapon in 1981 and then he will retire.
Love to see the photos of General Park watching missile firings you mention at @13:30. Do you have a URL to any online? Thanks.
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201604020008.html
This was as usual a tantalizing podcast, but you didn’t quite get to the topic that interests me: “How quickly?” and the connected topic, “What is timely detection?” The IAEA allows itself one month for detection of misuse of a large-scale enrichment or reprocessing plant in a state without a “Broader Conclusion”. But if a warhead is complete, other than the fissile components, once HEUF6 or Pu has been spirited away to a workshop someplace, isn’t the game over? Particularly since either kind of facility can provide many SQs of fissile material in much less than a month.